In the post Citizens United world, it's a fact of life that the sums of money circulating in politics not only far surpass the resources of ordinary Americans as individuals, but even more surpass the resources of ordinary Americans as a whole. While the 2010 Citizens United ruling put the final nail in the coffin of a regulatory (aka let's limit contributions) approach to campaign finance, the writing has been on the wall since the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo case in which the Supreme Court ruled that money is speech.
This having been said, what if there were a way to fight the power of the monied classes in politics, while not challenging the proposition that money is speech? Well, there is.
Representative John Sarbanes, a Democrat from Maryland, has been grappling with these questions. His idea: Pass a bill that will solve two related problems—voter cynicism and the influence of special interest money—with one set of reforms. First, give every citizen a $25 “My Voice” tax credit (if you contribute $25 to a campaign, you get $25 off your tax bill). Next, create a 6-to-1 “Freedom from Influence” matching fund (for every $1 you spend, the government kicks in $6 in public funding). Then watch political fundraising change for the better.
Let's put this in some context.
2014 Midterm spending peaked out at $3.67 Billion. Campaign spending has rising rapidly, but if you look at more recent years the numbers appear to have reached a natural limit of sorts.
Whether this is real, or an artifact of dark money is hard to say. Still, if we are really interested in whether or not Sarbanes campaign finance reform can be effective, it helps to know the scale of current spending.
Just over $1.5 billion was disbursed to candidates. Another $1.1 billion to the parties, and just under a billion to outside/other groups.
So, let's stack up Sarbanes proposal against this. The current US population is 320.4 million. Of this 93% are US citizens. So 298 million American citizens.
At $25 a pop, that translates to $7.45 billion. Multiply that by 6 to account for matching funds, and the number stands at $52.2 billion. That's more than 10 times current campaign spending.
Realistically, I imagine that the uptake will be far more limited. In 2014, only 81.7 million Americans bothered to vote. Calculating from this base, at $25 a pop, that translates to out to just over $2 billion. With matching funds, that's $14 billion. Still more than enough to cut the influence of the monied classes down to size.
Is it perfect? No.
Is it a start? Hell yes.